Caine flinched awake. The alternating tone of the “all-clear”
wasn’t deafening, but neither was it a sound one could sleep through. However,
that was just fine with Riordan: it meant that the shift-carrier Down-Under had completed its transit
from Wolf 359 and was safely beyond CTR space.

Riordan propped himself up in his combination acceleration
couch and bunk, felt a subtle sideways tug; the ship’s rotational habitat, or
rohab, was slowly resuming spin. He resisted the urge to lie back down;
drowsiness was exerting an even greater force than the slowly-increasing
gravity equivalent. By scheduling shifts for the end of passenger sleep cycles,
commercial carriers minimized tumbles and injuries from post-transit vertigo.

However, Down-Under was currently a commercial hull in name only. She had been leased by the
Commonwealth government for a logistical run to Wolf 359 and then the naval
depot at Lalande 21185. When they had started out from Earth, most of the
eighty conscious passengers were civilian specialists who disembarked at the
first stop, contractors for updating the automated facilities there. The
remainder were naval personnel who were subsequently briefed that there would
be a previously undisclosed stop before they reached the naval depot: Wolf 424.
What they did not know was that a Dornaani ship would be waiting there for
Caine. Hopefully.

Riordan unstrapped, rose into a sitting position. The
gravity equivalent was already close to point two gee. If Captain Kim Schoeffel
ran the ship according to civilian norms, she’d stop the steady increase when
it reached point three, then push it up another tenth of a gee every half hour
or so.

Caine stood, moved carefully to his stateroom’s locker,
pulled out a civilian duty suit fitted with an EVA hood and liner: his
invariable daywear. The civilian contractors had joked about it amiably,
alternately ensuring him that the hull was leak-proof and that the war was
over. Riordan had just nodded, smiled, and silently hoped they’d have no reason
to regret their jibes.

He attached a drinking bulb to the tap, filled it to half.
As he sipped the water and swirled it around in his mouth, the door’s courtesy
pager emitted a single tone. “It’s open.”

The pressure door slid aside and Ed Peña entered. Slowly.
Which was how he did most everything, unless the tempo of events demanded
otherwise.

Riordan had seen that occur only once. Ed had been at the
helm of the cutter he had requisitioned to catch Down-Under before she began her preacceleration burn to Wolf 359.
When DWC drones began threatening to obstruct their rendezvous vector, Peña had
gone into piloting overdrive, then simultaneously fooled and flummoxed the
Jovian traffic controllers until the cutter was docked. As soon as the
unwelcome excitement was over, Ed had slunk back into contented lassitude:
evidently, his preferred state of being.

Riordan made for the door. “Why didn’t the comms
adjutant just call me on the intraship?”

“Same reason you’re being asked to the ready room
instead of the bridge. To keep you from being seen in places or doing things
that would suggest you’re an important passenger.” He hadn’t appended his
sentences with “commodore” since they’d stepped aboard Down-Under: if at all possible, Riordan’s
journey was to be incognito. But Caine could still hear Ed’s unvoiced addition
of the military title, could sense it in the small nod with which he ended
almost every sentence.

Riordan nodded back and led the way.

Walking a few dozen meters keelward put them in the
rotranzo, or rotational transfer zone: the juncture where the parts of the ship
that were rotating interfaced with those that were not. They stepped quickly
from one slideway to the next, each slowing them until they were within the
main, keel-following hull, motionless and in zero-gee. Once there, Caine and Ed
relied upon magboots and handholds to stay in contact with the deck.

As they approached the ready room, the bulkhead-rated door
slid open before Caine could even touch the courtesy pager. Captain Schoeffel
waved them in. “Good shift?” she inquired.

Riordan smiled. “Can’t say. I slept through it.”

Peña shrugged.

Schoeffel returned Caine’s smile after shooting an annoyed
glance at Peña. “We’ve finished our first set of scans. No sign of your
ride, Commodore.”

Caine raised an eyebrow. “‘Commodore?’ I thought I was ‘Mister’
Riordan.”

She nodded at the closed door. “Benefit of privacy. I
figure if we’re going to speak openly about your mission, we can dispense with
the civilian labels they wanted to stick on you.”

“That’s very kind, Captain. How can I help you?”

“Well, you can start by telling me what we should be
looking for. We’ve already swept the EM spectrum for any sign of a beacon or
buoy. Nothing. So either your friends aren’t here yet or they are waiting and
watching. Any idea which it is?”

Caine shook his head. “Sorry, not a clue. The
invitation was pretty short on details. It wasn’t even clear that they would
wait here throughout the entire date range they gave us. And there was nothing
about methods of signaling or their likely coordinates.”

Riordan shrugged one shoulder. “The Dornaani have their
own ways of doing things. And they don’t always clue us in ahead of time.”

Schoeffel waved Caine toward a chair, included Peña in a
second gesture that looked a lot like an afterthought. “So when they do
show up, what should I expect?”

“Expect the Dornaani ship to be small: tiny, by our
standards. The one we’ve seen most frequently is one hundred eighty meters from
bow to stern. Widest beam is at the rear: about eighty meters. Best estimates
put it at about 130,000 cubic meters.”

“Okay, but how big are their shift-capable hulls?”

Riordan smiled. “Captain, that is a shift hull.”

“So they’re
about fifteen percent as long as we are and ten percent of our volume. And they
have longer shift range.”

“I can personally confirm a sixteen light year range. I
don’t know if that’s at the top, middle or bottom of their performance
spectrum.”

Schoeffel’s features moved past incredulity, approached
something akin to terror. “That exceeds the theoretical maximum of any
shift drive built according to Wasserman’s paradigms.”

Riordan nodded. “It’s pretty clear they use something
else. Transition on them is not like on our ships. Or Arat Kur or Slaasriithi.
You don’t feel that dip in your consciousness and then the wave of vertigo as
you come back up. It’s as if your awareness is shuddering: like it’s a stone
skipping across a pond.”

Schoeffel leaned forward. “Any idea why that is?”

Riordan nodded slowly, using that moment to consider:
Schoeffel’s questions were nearing the limit of what she needed to know for the
mission. Additionally, Caine had to be careful that his remarks did not raise
suspicions that Alnduul and his fellow Custodians had allowed Earth’s experts
to discover the secrets behind making deep space shifts. “I heard some of
our researchers speculating that, if the Dornaani drive doesn’t use stellar
gravity wells to navigate, then its extreme precision could enable a rapid
series of micro-shifts, rather than one big jump.”

Schoeffel exhaled. “That could be what causes the
shuddering of consciousness: a string of split-second blip in and out of space
normal. Damn.” She seemed to stir from a daze. “So, do they even need
to preaccelerate?”

“No, but a ‘standing shift’ seems to put lots more wear
on their drive. So, they don’t use it much.”

Schoeffel shook her head. “Do the Dornaani have any
more magic tricks I should be aware of?”

“Your sensors could have a hard time picking them up.
Their hulls are unipiece, streamlined, and evince properties of both
thermaflage and chromaflage. Our analysts call it comboflage.”

Schoeffel’s face was stony. “So, the short version is
that if they don’t want us to see them, we won’t.”

Caine shrugged. “Anything else, Captain?”

“Not at the moment, Commodore. Except, that I want you
on hand when they finally show up, to make sure that everything goes smoothly.”

Anything
to keep me heading toward Elena. But what he said was, “I’ll
be there, Captain.”